Young Children and Microcomputers: A Second Look

by Larry Prochner

A decade ago, an article appeared in an early childhood journal on a brand new subject: micro- computers and young children. It bore the tentative-sounding subtitle, "A First Look" (Ziajka, 1983). In 1994, computers are no longer a novelty in preschools and child care centers. For better or worse, they are found in early childhood settings across the country. The strong feelings evoked by the idea of computers in our classrooms in the early years -- of either fear and loathing or blind love -- have largely been tempered by familiarity. We have come to take the presence of computers for granted. As increasing numbers of early childhood educators have achieved a level of expertise and comfort with computers, it is timely to return to a central and perhaps discomforting question posed some years ago by Harriet Cuffaro (1985): "Just why should young children use computers?"

Do computers deserve a permanent place in our classrooms? Research on the effects of computer use on the social and cognitive development of young children is limited and, for the most part, contradictory and inconclusive. Almost none has been conducted on computers in child care centers (outside university lab schools). However, the same is true of many of the materials commonly found in early childhood settings. The effect of using blocks on child development, for example, has not been systematically studied (Davidson, 1989). We just accept that blocks are somehow beneficial, given our understanding of how children think and learn. As so wryly expressed by Jane Davidson, the author of a well-known textbook on computers, blocks should not be banned from child care centers because of a lack of research, and it is similarly unlikely that we should place a moratorium on computers pending further investigation. What is necessary, is for educators to be critical and reflective regarding their use.

The early excitement generated by LOGO (a high-level computer language as well as a philosophy of education developed by Seymour Papert), and the promise of all manner of positive benefits believed to accrue from child-computer interaction, resulted in extraordinary claims. One author suggested that, "by the year 2000, the child who becomes an adult unable to use a computer will be the equivalent of today's adult who can neither read nor write" (Hammond, p.53). Schools felt the pressure the most -- from parents and computer companies, for example -- to place a computer in every classroom. Some even desired a computer at every desk. The fear was that children who were not computer literate (a vague and questionable concept) were going to grow up to be adults out-of-work and out-of-touch in a computer dominated world.

These kind of statements are rarely made today outside the hyperbole of computer company advertising campaigns. Compare the "computer at every desk" slogan with the caution expressed in Davidson's textbook:

"The computer is seen as a material with many potential benefits and many potential problems. If it is used wisely, with the principles of early childhood development in mind, it can be a valuable addition to a developmental-based classroom. Although the computer has much to offer an early childhood classroom, its absence from the classroom will not be disastrous [emphasis added]" (Davidson, 1989, p.12).

It is difficult to imagine a textbook on another topic, children's literature for example, in which the author includes a disclaimer that while books are nice, they are not all that important. Davidson is not alone in her lukewarm approach to computers. Bailey, writing from the point-of-view of a kindergarten teacher in the journal Canadian Children, was more blunt:

"Computers are not necessary in the kindergarten classroom. In fact, unless they are incorporated with sensitivity and awareness, we gain by their absence [emphasis added]" (1989, p.28).

These examples point to a significant change in the way early childhood educators think about computers. It is not that computers are seen as the work of the devil, as they were once called by the novelist Roberston Davies. Instead, there is growing consensus that they are unnecessary and, quite possibly, a distraction from our curriculum objectives if they are not used in an educationally responsible manner.

What do I mean by educationally responsible? Simply, that we are able to provide a clear rationale, consistent with our philosophy of education, for the use of computers or any other material in our classrooms. Joseph Weizenbaum, professor of artificial intelligence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, perceptively called the computer in education a solution in search of a problem. This was certainly true of the field of early childhood education. Computers appeared in preschools and child care centers before they were assigned any real use. In the folklore surrounding computers, children were believed to have a natural affinity for the machines. Over time, it is true that innovative educators have found problems suitable for the "computer solution" in school settings. Books and encyclopedias on CD ROM provide up-to-date and easily accessible information for large numbers of students. The Internet can create an electronic link between children in classrooms around the world.

What, though, is the educational solution that the computer can provide in a child care center? Are electronic reproductions of grocery store checkout children's books the best we can do? Cuffaro (better known for her commentary on blocks) pointed us in the right direction by making the observation that today's generation of computer programmers did not necessarily grow up with computers. "What they did have," she noted, "were ideas -- the problems and projects they created and brought to computers" (1985, p.27). While Cuffaro was extremely bleak regarding the relevance of computers in early childhood classrooms, her insight proves useful. It leads us to ask the question: "What self-generated problems do young children have that they can bring to the computer?" By asking this question, we are open to view the computer as part of the flow of classroom activity instead of an activity in itself. In contrast, most software is self-serving -- designed to teach a specific concept or parcel of information. It is rarely connected to the life of the classroom. A few years ago, one critic observed that of the thousands of so-called educational programs available, almost all were based on principles of drill and practice. Software creators seemed to assume that the central problem in early childhood education was the efficient teaching of numbers, shapes and the alphabet. The question of why a child would want to pause, in the midst of a creative, play-based activity room, to make a sluggish electronic bear robotically grunt the ABC's, was never asked.

However, if we take our central problem in early childhood education to be the optimal growth and development of each child in our care, the computer may have a modest (not starring) role. Computers can be an alternative means for exploring the traditional core areas of the early childhood curriculum (for example, language, music and the creative arts). They can be a tool to enable a child to meet her goals (to tell a story, make a song or draw a picture), which are always greater than the mere use of the machine (learning about the computer).

In short, computer activities should be developmentally appropriate. The aim is for educators to create "a child-oriented computer experience, where children are in control, acting on software to make events happen rather than reacting to predetermined questions and closed-ended problems" (Haugland & Shade, 1988, p.37).

In my view, the best choice for software is found in the handful of drawing and writing programs for young children currently available on the market. A word of caution; "child-oriented" should not be taken to mean that children are completely in control of the software. Children must always work within the parameters set by the programmer and they are always limited by the procedural logic upon which computers are based. This is true even of open-ended programs such as word-processors. Using a computer to write changes the process and the product of writing. The computer is not "just another tool," as is so often claimed. It is not merely an innocuous alternative to markers, crayons, pencils or chalk.

Finally, it is well worth considering the computer in early childhood education in historical perspective (Zukerman, 1987). Many of the materials we now take for granted as essential in ECE classrooms were controversial when they were first introduced. Large wooden floor blocks are a good example. In the early twentieth-century, kindergarten teachers responded to the progressive movement in education by appropriating Froebel's Gifts (the essential materials of the original kindergarten). They gave the spheres, cones and blocks new meaning as secular objects for children's physical and psychological, rather than spiritual, growth. The old materials became a solution to the new definition of the educational problem. Computers, although more wieldy than blocks (it is difficult to set them on the floor, but what would happen if you did?), also need to be "taken over" by today's early childhood educators. We need to locate the computer's proper place within our current understanding of early childhood education. This process, surely a difficult one, might take more than a decade.

Dr. Larry Prochner is an assistant professor in the Department of Education at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec.

Zukerman, M. (1987). "Plus Ha Change: The High-Tech Child in Historical Perspective." Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 2, 255-264.

This article first appeared in Interaction Winter, 1995, published by the Canadian Child Care Federation.

Posted by: the Canadian Child Care Federation, September 1996.

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